Check out this Pop-up book by artist David A. Carter.

via Computerlove

This book sounds crazy.
From the BBC:

In 1991, James Palumbo co-founded the Ministry of Sound club in south London. Over the past 18 years, the brand has grown into the multi-million pound business MSHK, encompassing a record label, radio and TV stations and a soon-to-be-released fashion label. Now Palumbo has turned his hand to being an author.

His first novel, Tomas, is a biting satire in which the reluctant star of an absurdly low-brow reality TV show goes on a killing spree, mowing down the grotesque patrons of an exclusive club in the French Riviera. In the ensuing media frenzy, Tomas becomes a messianic figure, enlisting the help of a beautiful prostitute, an elderly judge, an alcoholic journalist, a spherical alien and the Emperor Napoleon.

Publishing companies keep producing trailers for books, which is like using cocaine to get someone hooked on alcohol, but with a description like the one above you want to watch these trailers. NSFW Read the rest of this entry »

Coraline is an award winning novella by Neil Gaiman that has been compared to Alice in Wonderland.  The story is being turned into an animated film due out in February 2009. The trailer can be seen below, but more fun is to be had at the official website.

EDIT: It looks like they have updated the site, click the link and then go to the theater, you can watch the trailer or skip it.  Then you’ll find all the videos.  It is no longer necessary to enter the keys below.

When you go to the Coraline site, you are prompted for a key.  The keys unlock short videos giving you a peek behind the scenes and introducing you to the makers of the film.  Very cool, here’s the keys I have:

moustachio

sweaterxxs

puppetlove

armpithair

stopmotion

buttoneyes

While I am partial to moustachio, as a child raised on Burt Reynolds, the other videos are incredible look behind the scenes. Oh, did I mention that the director, Henry Selick, also directed The Nightmare Before Christmas?

Trailer–

John over at Uncertain Times posted this, it is truly awesome.

According to Uncertain Times it’s, “A film for 4th Estate Publishers’ 25th Anniversary. Produced by Apt Studio.”

The Vimeo page says:

The film was produced in stop-motion over 3 weeks in Autumn 2008. Each scene was shot on a home-made dolly by an insane bunch of animators; you can see time-lapse films of each sequence being prepared and shot in our other films.

I did not know that Michael Crichton was battling cancer privately.  I am saddened by his loss. Read more here.  I love Sphere the most, that is an excellent book.  Jurassic Park, Timeline, Andromeda Strain were others that were popular enough to be bought by Hollywood, but they hardly ever did his words justice.

In 1973 Crichton took his work into his own hands, wrote and directed Westworld.  Perhaps, not the best way to remember him, but I do love me some bad sci-fi movie.  Definitely going to have to get the film, watch it again and post a so bad it is good review.

Robot cowboy!  Makes me think of that Muse video.

At a recent job (Seriously, I did work.  I can barely believe it myself.) I heard all about this curious book called, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History Of Four Meals by Michael Pollan.  The title sounds less than fun, but the book describes what we actually eat and how the food gets to us.  You can guess that most of the ingredients in your pre-packaged meals are just as scary as you imagine, but he analyzes a variety of foods, farming techniques and the wasteful travel arrangements that bring the food to our tables.  It’s one of those books that I want to read, but I don’t.

Well, it is a small world because Pollan was on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday.  He was dicussing his open letter to the next president in the New York Times Magazine.   He presents some really interesting facts about our grub.  “More recently, cheap energy has underwritten a globalized food economy in which it makes (or rather, made) economic sense to catch salmon in Alaska, ship it to China to be filleted and then ship the fillets back to California to be eaten.”  Doesn’t that sound stupid?  It’s cheaper to ship the fish to China, pay Chinese folks to fillet the fish and then have the fillets shipped back, then to simply fillet the fish in America.  LAME.

For a Reader’s Digest like version of his letter you can listen to the Fresh Air episode.  Try this link or this one.

I have been lucky enough to catch some really great shows on NPR’s Fresh Air in the last couple of weeks and I want to share.  Last week I was listening to James Bamford talk about his new book, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 To The Eavesdropping On America. Listen to the show by following this link or trying the on on NPR.

This book sounds interesting, though it might be terribly depressing. The NPR story is wonderfully scary.  Unless you like the fact that all the cellphone providers have outsourced the bugging of your phone conversations to mysterious companies.  The NSA is only getting its information from a third party, instead of your government.  I don’t know how many people are listening to me describe my strange rash over the phone, but it would be nice if they could speak up and suggest a balm.